A month ago, you visited Ukraine and took part in a cultural conference in Lviv that focused specifically on protecting and rebuilding Ukraine's cultural sector. What are the main lessons for Estonia from Ukraine and what should we already be preparing for in peacetime so that we are ready?

I think the most important message from that conference was that an aggressor seeks to destroy cultural identity just as much as defense capability. When we talk about cultural heritage, for example, we are really talking about the foundations of national identity.

There are simple examples: I want to protect Kuressaare's Old Town because I was born and raised there, I love that heritage and it is tied to my family's story — and that is where the will to defend comes from. The same goes for the Song and Dance Celebration or other cultural events that help foster our willingness to defend the country. On the one hand, culture plays a very important role in creating and strengthening that will to defend, and on the other hand, it is equally important for us to protect that identity both in times of crisis and in wartime.

The war in Ukraine has shown that Russia does not particularly care what it bombs. It is deliberately attacking museums, churches and archives in an attempt to physically destroy Ukraine's identity, history and language?

Exactly. The aggressor's goal there is to destroy Ukraine's identity, which is why cultural sites are being deliberately targeted. According to UNESCO, more than 500 culturally significant buildings have already been destroyed.

By the Ukrainians' own estimates, the number is over 1,700 — several times higher. That does not even include sites connected to culture that, in the Estonian sense, are not protected heritage sites; there are even more of those. In addition, UNESCO-protected sites in Odesa, Kyiv and Crimea have also been destroyed. These are deliberate attacks and while we were in Lviv ourselves, we visited two sites that had just been hit in a drone attack.

When we talk about defending the Estonian state, we cannot separate it from culture. If we look at the preamble of the Estonian Constitution, it does not really speak much about people as such; instead, it says that, "with unwavering faith and a steadfast will," the state must guarantee the preservation of the Estonian nation, language and culture through the ages.

Yes, we have our state because we love our culture and preserve it. That is what a nation state is based on.

If we truly want to protect this culture, then perhaps the assumption must also be that an enemy would want to attack it in exactly the same way. Potential targets could include the main building of the Estonian National Museum, Kumu and other buildings of immense cultural value to Estonia. Can we therefore conclude that a large part of protecting cultural heritage during wartime depends on how quickly we are able to evacuate valuable museum collections at the right moment? For example, the Estonian flag from the Estonian National Museum in Tartu?

Yes, the evacuation of museum collections is undoubtedly part of these crisis plans — not only in the context of wartime, but in all possible crisis situations.

In recent history, the fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris was perhaps one of the most significant events that prompted Europe's cultural sector to prepare for various crises and we are also cooperating extensively in this area. These are exactly the kinds of issues we deal with on a daily basis.

In other words, if a building catches fire, people would know exactly what is most valuable inside that building and how to move it as quickly as possible to a place where it is no longer at risk?

Yes — what is most valuable, where the necessary packing materials are located and what the roles of people are both within that museum or cultural institution and within the local community.

I think it may even have been more than five years ago when one of our first tabletop exercises took place at Haapsalu Castle. Looking back, one of its greatest benefits was that the local rescue workers became acquainted with the museum director and vice versa. If you already have those contacts in your phone and, as a local rescuer, you understand the context, the details and the layout of the site, then that is the most important preparation for a potential crisis.

For several years now, Estonia has been organizing large-scale rescue exercises in which large numbers of people are evacuated from one part of the country to another. Now the Ministry of Culture's administrative area has similar plans. In one of the Estonian Art Museum's museums (Kadriorg, Kumu, Niguliste, Mikkel or Adamson-Eric Museum — ed.), an exercise will take place in just a few months on how to move valuable cultural objects to safety as quickly as possible in a crisis situation. As I understand it, this essentially means taking paintings off the walls as quickly as possible, wrapping them up and transporting them to a safe location. Is this kind of exercise a first for your field?

We call it a field exercise and it really is the first of its kind. We have carried out many tabletop exercises and I believe that by now most museums have also conducted tabletop exercises. This, however, is a field exercise where we practically act out the entire process and identify possible obstacles. Those obstacles can come from many different places, ranging from water pipes blocking access somewhere to a lack of the necessary bubble wrap. So yes, in that sense this field exercise is unprecedented for us, even though we have theoretically worked through these situations many times before. Now we will be able to do it in practice as well.

What exactly is it that you will be rehearsing?

The evacuation of important objects, as well as everything that comes before and after it. This includes packing, transportation and the different roles both within the museum itself and in other related institutions, such as the Rescue Board. Equally important are the preparation of the entire process and learning from it afterward.

How many Estonian museums currently have bubble wrap, moisture-resistant boxes, packing tape and other supplies prepared somewhere in storage?

Most of them do. These are familiar materials for museums in any situation because collection managers have long worked in this field and with the packing of artifacts. However, what we are focusing on now is ensuring that, in a crisis situation, there are suitable boxes, bubble wrap and other materials specifically for those particular objects.

According to Statistics Estonia, there are a total of 101 museums in Estonia with 160 visitor sites and together they house around seven million museum objects. In the medical field, triage is used in crisis situations — deciding who is helped first and who last. Has this kind of triage already been carried out for Estonia's cultural heritage?

Yes, we have identified the most important objects and made preparations concerning them.

So these would include the Art Museum of Estonia, the Estonian History Museum and the Estonian National Museum?

These are objects located in different museums and perhaps even objects that are not in museums at all. Cultural valuables and artistic heritage items can also be found in churches, for example, and they are located all across Estonia.

Who decides — or has already decided — that this Wiiralt print will be left behind in the fire while a Konrad Mägi painting is taken instead? How does that process work?

Crisis situations are, of course, always very different. We have made plans, but I want to stress that our goal is still to save and preserve all collections. This includes all cultural heritage that has been registered either as museum objects or as heritage buildings. What the best methods are for preserving or evacuating them depends on the specific situation.

In the case of built heritage, unfortunately we often cannot even speak about evacuation. Instead, we talk about things like 3D digitization or other methods of protection, such as covering windows or using sandbags, which has become very common in Ukraine.

Depending on the type of object, there are different ways to save that cultural heritage and everything depends on the circumstances. Our goal is always to preserve as much heritage as possible — it is simply that certain items are prioritized for rescue first.

And there are probably, inevitably, some objects for which it must be accepted that they simply cannot be saved. A couple of months ago Commander of the Defense Forces Andrus Merilo told ERR that the Auvere power plant is simply so close to the Narva River that, if war comes, we must be prepared to lose it. We also have Narva Castle and Kuremäe Convent similarly close to the border.

That is exactly why I said that different objects require different scenarios. If we are talking about those two sites, then digitization is probably the most sensible scenario. That is how we have tried to think through these objects.

In reality, war is only one type of crisis when it comes to cultural heritage. We are also dealing with fires and power outages. In some cases, we are talking about floods, which unfortunately have already damaged several of our collections in different locations. In the context of cultural heritage, these crises are to some extent part of everyday life, not to mention the various hybrid threats we are seeing more and more of today. That also includes cyberattacks when we talk about digital heritage.

Digitization is probably one of the simplest ways to protect cultural heritage from physical threats such as fire, flooding or power outages. At this point, have we digitized all the parts of Estonia's cultural heritage that we genuinely want to digitize?

It is true that the Ministry of Culture has been working on digitization since 2018. With support from the European Union, we have been able to carry out major mass-digitization projects that have allowed us to digitize the most important parts of our heritage. We have also begun 3D digitization, although in that context we certainly have not yet digitized the most important share of it, but we are working on it now. In this field, we are also serving as an example for other countries and many visitors come to study our work from both Europe and elsewhere in the world.

Another initiative we are leading in this area is the creation of a pan-European solution for storing digitized material across national borders. Many European countries have joined us in this effort and likewise want a shared solution. Rather than every country having to invent its own way of preserving digitized cultural heritage outside its borders, we want to find a common solution with the support of the European Union.

So that means, for example, that digitized Seto leelo songs would be stored on a server somewhere abroad?

Exactly.

Speaking of foreign countries, let us imagine that we are in an art museum: paintings are taken off the walls, packed up and then a vehicle arrives to transport them to a safe location. But where is that safe location? Have agreements already been made with other countries so that a valuable Konrad Mägi painting could be safely transferred abroad?

What I can say here is that we have many different evacuation methods and scenarios and everything depends on the specific situation.

In Ukraine, it seems it quickly became clear that in the event of martial law or a major crisis, transport vehicles, trucks and fuel would be requisitioned, leaving too few vehicles and drivers available to transport cultural valuables. Is the Ministry of Culture already signing binding agreements so that, if it became necessary to evacuate Kumu — even because of a fire — you would know exactly whom to call and be certain they would arrive with trucks and personnel?

Yes, I can say that these scenarios have been worked through and we do have binding agreements in place.

So far we have been talking about preparing for war, but as you yourself pointed out, a crisis does not necessarily have to mean wartime. A far more likely crisis might instead be a prolonged power outage — for example, if another cable in the Gulf of Finland were damaged. How many cultural institutions currently have generators to cope with a long-term power outage?

I cannot give a number, but this is also one of the scenarios we have worked through. I believe that by now all key institutions have acquired generators for themselves.

So this has also included scenarios examining how museum collections and archives would be preserved in a situation where a power outage causes the loss of heating or cooling systems? Paintings are extremely sensitive to temperature fluctuations.

Exactly. I remember a personal example from a tabletop exercise at the Art Museum of Estonia where the scenario also involved a power outage. That said, it must be noted that power outages generally do not affect our collections and museums very severely, although much depends on the weather conditions. If the doors remain closed and the air is not circulating, temperatures stay stable for quite a long time, so we would really have to be talking about a very prolonged outage. That is particularly the case when we are discussing cooling systems and other infrastructure necessary for preserving collections.

I also have to ask about money because these issues cannot really be discussed without mentioning the financial side. What is the Ministry of Culture's budget for strengthening the protection of cultural heritage in the coming years? The next state budget is currently being prepared — are you submitting additional funding requests?

In fact, in the coming years we will have an opportunity to prepare for crises with support from the Norwegian and European Economic Area financial mechanisms. Our Nordic neighbors have provided Estonia with approximately €6 million for these preparations, including the construction of the Hiiumaa heritage repository. It will be a small, crisis-resilient storage facility designed to ensure the preservation of heritage.

In addition, the Ministry of Culture, in cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior and other institutions, has applied for broad-based national defense funding for crisis preparedness. At the same time, these costs are not especially significant because, as I mentioned earlier, preparing for crises has in reality long been part of the cultural sector's everyday work. We have tried to continue doing as much as possible with the people and resources already available.

--

Follow ERR News on Facebook and X and never miss an update!